Drake Robison wasn’t a big star in high school, but he’s going to the big time now. The former Harlem pitcher has given a verbal commitment to pitch for Mississippi.

Robison will be the first former NIC-10 player to play for an SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 or Big 12 school on scholarship since Freeport’s Matt Vorwald and Drew Dickinson went to Illinois in 1999 (although Boylan’s Jake Smolinski signed with Clemson before signing as a second-round draft pick).

“It’s a cool thing,” Robison said in a phone interview. “Harlem has definitely had some great players who were better than me who just didn’t get that opportunity.”

Like Dickinson, a two-time All-American who began as a walk-on at Illinois, Robison was an all-conference player in high school, but not lights-out dominant.

But he’s turned into a dominant pitcher at Iowa Western Community College. Robison had 46 strikeouts vs. only 12 walks, with five saves in 36 1/3 innings as a freshman last year for a powerhouse that has reached the NJCAA World Series six of the last seven years, winning the title in 2010 and 2012.

Like Dickinson, Robison’s big breakthrough was control.

“I throw probably 60 percent fastballs, 30 percent curveballs and 10 percent circle changeups, and I can throw all three of them whenever I want,” Robison said. “I have a lot more confidence behind all three pitches.”

Robison weighed only 150 pounds when he first made Harlem’s varsity, but he always had a live arm. “He once picked up a ball on the right field warning track and threw it on the fly to third base,” Harlem coach Doug Livingston recalled. “You just knew he had potential.”

Robison has added five miles an hour to his fastball since going to college, but he still only tops out at 92. That’s fast enough.

“He throws a lot of strikes and he has a quick arm,” Western Iowa coach Marc Rardin said. “He’s not 86-88 anymore. He’s a lot of 87 to 91. And when 90 comes out of a body that’s 6-foot-4, it looks like it’s 90. When 90 comes out of a body that’s 6-1, 175 pounds, like Drake, it looks like it’s 95-96. There’s deception in the perception of his velocity.”

And he has a tough breaking ball, one that Rardin calls a slider and Robison calls a curveball. By either name, it breaks hard, and breaks when and where Robison wants it to break.

“He has a great slider. That’s his out pitch,” Rardin said. “Ole Miss is projecting him to come in and close for them.

Page 2 of 2 - “He’s a tough kid. He wants to win. He’s not scared about losing. When a kid isn’t scared to lose, when he’s more excited about the chance to win, that sets you up for a lot of things.”

Ole Miss has reached the NCAA tournament 10 of the last 12 years, has finished in the top four in the nation in attendance four years in a row and has the nation’s No. 8-ranked incoming recruiting class.

“That’s definitely going to be a new experience for me,” Robison said. “Ole Miss brings in 8,000 fans a game; that’s going to be completely different for me.”

But that’s a year off. In the meantime, Robison, a sophomore, wants to pitch Iowa Western to another NJCAA title. The Reivers begin their season Feb. 20.